Labor Day Weekend Marked By 42 Shootings In New York City
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) --The Labor Day weekend was particularly violent with 42 people shot in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly stood together Monday to address the spree of separate shootings.
"I don't think it's back to the bad old days," Bloomberg said. "It was a bad weekend, no question about that."
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"We're concerned about it but the numbers are still way down from where they were 10 years ago," Kelly said.
Bloomberg wants more federal involvement in gun control enforcement and a loophole addressed involving gun shows.
"We've just got to do something about this, this just cannot go on," Bloomberg said.
Kelly said he continues to try new tactics to address the problem by shifting resources and using Operation Impact to saturate high-crime areas with officers but said there are "still too many guns on the street."
He acknowledged some of the shootings over the weekend were related to festivities stemming from the West Indian Day Parade. The parade itself has been the scene of fatal shootings in 2003 and 2005. In addition, amid Monday's parade festivities, police said that two men were shot around 2:30 p.m. Both were taken to Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn.
Two men were killed and three others wounded in two separate shootings in Brooklyn over the weekend. Police responded to a 911 call of shots fired in East Flatbush at 12:45 a.m. Monday and found four gunshot victims.
Tyrief Gary, 18, was shot in the chest and was pronounced dead. Three other men were taken to Kings County Hospital. One was shot in the leg, one in the back and one in the arm. They were in stable condition.
At 10 p.m. Sunday, police responding to another 911 call in the East New York neighborhood found 24-year-old Donavan Dallison dead with a gunshot wound to the head.
Police have not made an arrest in either shooting.
Police are also questioning a 17-year-old boy in connection with the shooting of eight people at a backyard party in the Bronx Sunday. An 11-year-old boy and two teenage girls were among those hurt. A suspect identified as Oneil Dasilva, 17, is still on the loose.
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